The Exegetical Narrative
New Directions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5348562 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeffrey L Rubenstein (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 88-106 |
| Publication date | 2009-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Jewish Quarterly Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-6682 • E-ISSN: 1553-0604 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jqr.0.0035 |
| OpenAlex | W1985747822 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
The Exegetical Narrative:New Directions Jeffrey L. Rubenstein (bio) Keywords Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Joshua Levinson, Ha-Sipur she-lo' supar : Omanut ha-sipur ha-mikra'i ha-murḥav be-midreshe ḥazal [The Twice-Told Tale: A Poetics of the Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash], sipur darshani, sipur mikra'I murḥav, Exegetical Narrative, Genesis Rabbah, Tannaitic Midrashism, Leviticus Rabbah, Bavli Joshua Levinson . Ha-Sipur she-lo' supar : Omanut ha-sipur ha-mikra'i ha-murḥav be-midreshe ḥazal [The Twice-Told Tale: A Poetics of the Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash]. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005. Pp. 360. Rarely does one find a book that so far excels previous works in a field as to constitute a quantum advance in scholarship. Such a book is Joshua Levinson's The Twice-Told Tale: A Poetics of the Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash.1 The focus of the book is the sipur darshani (or sipur mikra'i murḥav), the exegetical narrative, primarily in Genesis Rabbah (and, to a certain extent, in the tannaitic midrashim), and secondarily in its later manifestations in Leviticus Rabbah and in the Bavli.2 The book is vast in scope, profound in analysis, penetrating in attention to the exegetical [End Page 88] narrative while at the same time brilliantly engaging a great many other topics. Levinson covers numerous issues neglected by past research, and where others have paved the way, he adds nuance and depth. Rabbinic retellings of biblical stories have long tantalized scholars: whence did the rabbis derive the events and dialogues that they attribute to the biblical characters, of which there appear to be nary a hint in the text? How could they have dared to make up such fictions out of their own heads? Did the rabbis themselves and their audience actually "believe" these stories or did they understand them to be (what we would call) fictions or "mere" homilies, not the "real" meaning of the text? The gap between the rabbinic narrative and the plain meaning of the Bible seems so great in many cases as to make it hard to fathom how the stories could be sincere exegetical enterprises. Some earlier scholars accordingly minimized the importance of the exegetical dimension of these narratives: Joseph Heinemann, in his Agadot ve-toldotehem (Aggadah and Its Development), suggested that the rabbis created stories as a response to, and portrayed characters in light of, the historical issues of their times, whereas Isaak Heinemann, in Darkhe ha-agadah (Methods of the Aggadah), saw the sages as deliberately embellishing biblical stories in order to communicate metatemporal values and truths.3 Even Yonah Fraenkel, Levinson's mentor, who considers the rabbinic exegete to be grappling with real irritants in the biblical text, nevertheless views such textual problems more as springboards to which he opportunistically attaches his story, which functions primarily to express spiritual ideas and concepts, rather than as biblical interpretation.4 More recent scholars have taken the exegetical aspect seriously, accepting that if the exegetical narrative (and midrash in general) represents itself as exegesis, that we should tend to grant that claim. In a series of meticulous studies James Kugel demonstrated that many narrative elements of rabbinic midrash in fact derived from exegesis, though they could be transferred from their original contexts and reused in other stories, a process that obscured their exegetical origins.5 Many of these motifs, Kugel showed, paralleled those found in Qumran documents and other literature of the Second Temple Period, a confluence which may [End Page 89] point to a common interpretive tradition. In his Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, Daniel Boyarin employed the literary theory of intertextuality to shed light on the nature of midrashic exegesis and account for how the rabbis read the biblical text.6 Midrash, for Boyarin, is a radical intertextual reading of the Bible, in which every verse can be brought into relation with every other verse, a process that generates problems and creates solutions (interpretations). While, the nature of the exegesis, for Boyarin, is always conditioned by the historical, cultural, and ideological milieu of the exegete, and hence different interpreters will resolve the same difficulties in different ways, midrash is not a product of these
Art · Biblical studies · Dead Sea Scrolls · Hebrew Bible · Jewish studies · Judaism · Literature · Midrash · Narrative · Poetics · Poetry · Scholarship · Theology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,07 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2011 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |